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Show house/ 459 citizens who kept t h e i r eyes turned from the specter of emotional starvation. Each day I walked the s t r e e t s alone or tread through wet sand and chilly fog along the beach below my motel room. I made myself get out and walk, despite the morning sickness and the psychological fatigue that kept me in bed u n t i l noon. I lived for the evening when Brian would come by bus from Camp Pendleton and spend a few hours before returning to meet the midnight curfew. Sometimes he d i d n ' t show up at a l l , and I would wait until the last bus-load of Marines was emptying into sidestreets and stores before I turned back to the motel. It was humiliating, needing him so much. But every nerve would tremble, as though I was l i t e r a l l y starving, when he didn't show up. I needed the reassurance of his presence, of his hand upon my belly, of his words of love in my ear to counteract the vast depression that hung over me. Everything seemed set against our marriage. The Marine Corps, I was discovering, was an organization of single men - if not in fact, then in s p i r i t . Marriage was mocked, defiled and poorly t o l e r a t e d . Married men were called 'brownies' and were denied base leave more often than the single men. Brian's mother had refused to send her permission for our marriage although we called/, on Christmas day and told her that 1 was expecting Brian's child. I watched shame pool in Brian's eyes as he begged for her consent. His stubborn pride was gone, his last reserve against his mother's manipulations. She told him that the child couldn't possibly be h i s . "Otherwise, how ,c°uld she knoj»' so g^np?" sfap -.reasoned fr0m her end of the line. |
